Give Your Best to the Best and Less to the Rest
By Dave Anderson
In leadership workshops I raise eyebrows when I instruct managers to give 80% of their time, energy, rewards and resources to the top 20% of their people. This is the opposite of what most managers do as they exhaust themselves trying to elevate the bottom 20% in their organizations from miserable to mediocre. I stress that if permitted, the bottom 20% of performers will take 80% of managers' time and energy; time and energy they won't have available to invest in their best people. I'm going to go over the top three questions I hear concerning this strategy and answer with explanations I hope will prompt you to begin giving your best to the best in your organization, as it's the only way to reach your full potential as a dealership.
1. "It's not fair to spend the majority of my time, energy, rewards and resources on those who are already doing well." First, let's define "fair." Being fair does not mean treating all your people alike. Being fair means treating your people in a manner they've earned and deserve. And they don't all deserve nor have they earned the same time, energy, rewards and resources. Naturally, everyone must be held to the same standards for integrity, work ethic and customer satisfaction. These are non-negotiable issues. Beyond that, investing more in your top people makes sense because they already have the foundation of skills, habits and attitudes it takes to soar above average. Thus, you'll find it takes less effort to get them from good to great than it does to get your worst from miserable to mediocre. Leaders know the best way to maximize their organization's potential is to develop its strengths: not continually try to repair weaknesses. When you give your best to the best you're leveraging strengths and investing in the assets that'll bring a greater return. When you devote the majority of your time to poor performers you play catch-up and will find you rarely turn weaknesses into strengths. With much work, you might bring them up to average or a hair better, but that's a pitiful strategy for building your company. Unfortunately, most leaders don't treat their best much different from their worst. Their best get the same schedules, bonuses, personnel support, opportunities, training and pay plans as the slackers. Do this long enough and your best will do one of two things: leave or loaf.
I become nauseous when I hear people crying out on the "fairness" issue: whining about how this underachiever needs this or needs that. They don't understand that life was never designed to dish out rewards with respect to what is needed: instead, life dishes out rewards with respect to what is deserved. If this sounds harsh, I'll tell you what's harsher: acceptance of mediocrity, perpetual plateaus, misuse of company resources, missed forecasts, turnover of your best people, weak morale and failing to develop the vast potential of your best performers. Treating everyone alike and weakening the strong to strengthen the weak is a defective philosophy with destructive consequences.
2. "What about all the high-potential people we have who are on the bottom rungs right now or new to the company? Are we just to ignore them?" First, it's your people who are already doing well who have the most potential, not the ones at the bottom or in the middle. Proven performers already have demonstrated they possess the talent, skill, habits and attitudes to become excellent. This gives them a huge head start and puts them on the fast track to lead your company to new levels if management would just wake up, nurture their talent and steer their momentum. Secondly, I'm not advocating ignoring anyone. You must re-allocate your time, energy, rewards and resources. This means you'll be spending less of all these with the rest of your team, not abandoning them. Besides, if you have a lot of non-performers and bottom dwellers, you have other problems that need addressing: how you're recruiting and hiring, the effectiveness of your training, the level of expectations and quality of management, just to mention a few. If your dealership has too many average, nice folks turning in lackluster numbers, it's an indictment of how you're currently allocating your time, energy, rewards and resources and should make obvious the need to redirect your focus to building eagles and stop trying to rehabilitate sparrows. Once you begin redirecting your focus to the performers who bring you the biggest return, you set a standard that declares that your organization puts a premium on excellence. This higher level of expectation creates a positive peer pressure that stretches people to new levels or flushes them out of the company; either way, you win. When you give your best to the best, word gets around. You'll attract eagles from other organizations in addition to keeping the ones you have.
3. "Specifically, what can we do to give our best to the best?" That's up to you and what works in your company, but here are a few ideas we've used successfully. In sales, start a "Top 20%" club and qualify people for it quarterly. In other words, if you have 10 salespeople, whichever two (20%) have the highest number of sales for a three-month period get to be in the club for the next quarter. (Use whatever criteria you like but make it easy to measure.) You can give them a cash bonus for making the club, have top management take them out to lunch once per month-anywhere they want to go and let them order whatever they want. Bring in a "temp" once per week for one day and let the top people share services: sending out their follow-up mailers, newsletters, calling past customers, scheduling appointments etc. If they make the club two quarters in a row, let them write their own schedule-with a minimum number of hours required. (Don't sweat this. Your best people are not going to schedule themselves off during busy times.) Once during the quarter give them tickets to a ballgame or movie and let them take their families. You get the idea. Get creative. Adapt the program to fit other departments in your dealership as well. I guarantee three things: 1. Those in the club will not want to relinquish membership. 2. Those not in it will stretch to get there. 3. When you make being a top sales professional special enough, your best people are less likely to get "manageritis."
Don't take my word for this strategy. Look at history. There has not been a greatly successful leader or organization in business, politics or religion that gave equal time, energy, rewards and resources to everyone, especially to those in the middle or on the bottom of the production ladder. Like many successful corporate leaders, G.E.'s Jack Welch invests considerably more with the best and brightest in his inner circle; as a leader, Jesus spent most of his time with 12-and focused on three of them: John, Peter and James (the three who went on to be the most productive of the 12). You have limited time, energy, rewards and resources. Prioritize them shrewdly and quit trying to be everything to everyone. Hold out for the best employees you can find. Set high standards and train them effectively. Provide top coaches and a supportive environment. Then give your best to the best. Invest in your top assets, where you'll get the greatest return. After all, you don't go to a horse race and put your money on a nag just to improve its self-image.
Dave Anderson is president of The Dave Anderson Corporation, a sales, management and leadership training concern. Dave conducts "Leading At The Next Level" workshops and publishes "Leading At The Next Level" newsletter. He is the author of "Selling Above The Crowd: 365 Strategies For Sales Excellence" and his Web site, www.learntolead.com has free training articles and materials updated weekly. Dave is a member of The National Speaker's Association, conducts workshops and keynotes worldwide. danderson@dealeronline.com
